Total Recall (1990)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1990
	Director: Paul Verhoeven (Robocop, Starship Troopers)
	Actors: Arnold Schwarzenegger (Terminator, Predator), Sharon Stone (Basic Instinct), Michael Ironside (Starship Troopers, The Machinist), Rachel Ticotin (Man on Fire, Con Air)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, SF
	Conditions of visioning: 21.10.2012, Blu-ray (edition supervised by the director), Home cinema
Synopsis: Douglas Quaid (Schwarzenegger) has a peaceful life and a nice wife (Stone) but he dreams of going to Mars, so he uses the services of the Rekall company to get memories implanted, but are those really memories or is he really a spy with the goal to save the red planet?
Review: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Paul Verhoeven at their best! The score by Jerry Goldsmith is not bad either. I have seen this movie many times in my youth, I already possess it on DVD (filled with bonuses) in a round metal case with the shape of Mars, and in a previous Blu-ray edition. But this time I could fully appreciate a HD transfer supervised by the director. Interested about the story of the movie, I have recently read the novel that inspired it: We can remember for you wholesale by Philip. K. Dick to whom we also owe A scanner darkly, Do Androids dream of electric sheep? (that inspired Blade Runner), and many others. Only then I realized the work of adaptation that had to be done on this 20-page novel that contains no mention of Mars and none of the uncertainty of knowing if the hero is dreaming or not. On the same topic, I learned by watching an interview with Paul Vorhoeven on the Blu-ray that the third act of the movie (i.e. saving the red planet but also the hesitation between dream and reality) was not written until the movie making was well advanced. Verhoeven also mentions that his favorite scene is the one in which a so-called doctor tries to convince Quaid that he is indeed dreaming and has to take a pill to avoid being lobotomized. By comparison the same scene copied in the remake Total Recall (2012) looks out of place. All this to say that I appreciate the story in Total Recall and the work of adaptation, unlike in movies like 300 or Watchmen which are copies of the original material. The acting is OK, nothing more than can be expected from such a movie. A special mention to one of my favorite actors Michael Ironside, excellent as usual in the supporting role of the bad guy's henchman. The special effects are pretty good for this period that didn't know CGIs yet. It was all prosthetics for the faces, matte paintings and optical tricks for the set. The martian landcapes (shot in Mexico) look good, except that they are far too red. The reflection of the Martian surface deep red on the faces of the actors indoors is also exagerated, and uneven between the different shots within the same scene, which is the biggest visual default I find to this movie. It seems not to be due to the HD transfer but to have been intended so at the time of theatrical release. Except from that, the quality of the images is very good as you can can notice by looking at the grain on the skin of the actors' faces. An impressive scene is also the one when Quaid rides a train from the spaceport to the main city, the camera zooming out from his face to a full panorama of the landscape in a nicely well done combination of optical shots. Also the spaceship landing reveals nicely the architecture of the constructions on the red planet. You can see a snapshot of this scene in HD by clicking on the thumbnail below or go to this page, in this interesting website that compares DVD and Blu-ray images. To conclude, I will mention a connection that I noticed between this movie and Avatar by James Cameron. The comparison hit me especially when watching the landing scene I have just mentionned. In it, you see the hero arriving to this foreign planet on which the leaders are given a huge power and use the military to keep the local population under control, while those only want freedom (the mutants in one movie, the Na'vis in the other). When watching the arrival scene in Blu-ray, I noticed for the first time that the trains goes through a mining region, in the middle of which you can see a giant digging machine, just like in Avatar. I realized that all this power is given to the local leaders because they mine a precious mineral (Turbinium in one movie, Unobtanium in the other) from which Earth has become dependant. Finally, in both movies the main character has to choose between his former real life and another, fantastic one, in which he saves a planet. In my interpretation they both chose to follow the dream.
Rating: 8 /10